Spineless Senate Democrats are questioning Graham Platner

By Lisa McCormick

Let us speak plainly about what is happening in the United States Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers embraced an accused war criminal—and in the state of Maine, where more than 200,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic Senate primary, up from 162,000 in the party’s 2020 primary.

Progressive populist Graham Platner has won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. He won it without corporate PAC money. He won it without bundlers and vicious attacks on Governor Janet Mills. He won it without kneeling to the profane political establishment that has funded the careers of his accusers.

Let me name this for what it is: a grave insult to his wife. A cowardly act of sabotage wrapped in the language of concern. And a direct threat to ever winning back the majority that could stop the Republican agenda.

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said, after winning Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. “To all those who feel let down, disappointed, or disillusioned. It is my job to earn your trust, your faith, and your support. And I will spend every day of this campaign, and if I have the privilege, every day in the United States Senate, doing exactly that.”

Platner pledged to earn our trust, our faith, and our support, but instead of rallying behind the nominee who defeated the establishment’s preferred candidate, certain Senate Democrats have chosen to question his character.

Because when you question Graham Platner’s character—over rumor, over innuendo, over nothing that would ever appear in a federal disclosure form or a campaign finance report—you are not engaging in legitimate criticism. You are keeping Republicans in the majority. You are protecting a system that has failed working people for fifty years. And you are defending the honor of a woman who does not deserve your silence: Susan Collins.

Let us review the record of the senior senator from Maine.

Susan Collins cast the deciding vote for the Supreme Court justice who cast the deciding vote to vanquish abortion rights in America. Not a constraint. Not a regulation. A right—tens of millions of women’s right to control their own bodies—extinguished because Susan Collins believed a liar’s assurances and voted to seat Brett Kavanaugh.

Susan Collins cast her vote for Republican leadership that refused to even consider President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court—Merrick Garland, a moderate jurist denied even a hearing for nearly a year. She stood silent while Mitch McConnell stole a seat. And then she aided the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election by refusing to hold her party accountable for the lie that the election was stolen.

And Susan Collins voted to acquit President Donald Trump after he mounted a failed coup attempt and incited a mob of terrorists to storm the United States Capitol. She saw the insurrection with her own eyes. She hid in a secure room while police officers were beaten with American flags. And then she voted to let the man who incited it walk free.

That is the company these Senate Democrats are keeping.

They are not attacking Graham Platner because of a genuine concern about his character. They are attacking him because he refused to raise money the way they raise money. Because he refused to accept “the way things are.” Because his very presence in the United States Senate would be an indictment of every single one of them who took the profane establishment’s blood money and called it pragmatism.

So let the condemnation be absolute.

I condemn every Senate Democrat who has questioned Graham Platner’s character while Susan Collins sits across the aisle—the woman who gave us Kavanaugh, who abetted an insurrectionist, who voted to acquit a coup-attempting madman.

I condemn those who whisper rumors about a good man’s wife rather than speak plainly about a corrupt woman’s record.

I condemn the cowardice of a party that will savage its own nominee over nothing—over less than nothing—while refusing to utter a single honest word about Susan Collins’s role in the destruction of American democracy.

Because here is the truth they dare not say aloud: If Graham Platner is too flawed for their endorsement, then what standard are they applying? And why does that standard never seem to apply to the senators who raise millions from pharmaceutical executives, defense contractors, and Wall Street bundlers?

The answer is simple: the standard is not character. The standard is loyalty. Loyalty to the donor class. Loyalty to the establishment. Loyalty to a profane political system that would rather lose with dignity than win with someone who refuses to kneel.

So, my fellow citizens: do not be fooled.

When a Senate Democrat questions Graham Platner’s character, they are not protecting the party. They are protecting themselves. They are protecting Susan Collins. They are protecting a system in which a woman who gave us Kavanaugh, who abetted an insurrection, and who voted to acquit a coup-attempting president can be called a “moderate” while a man who refuses corporate PAC money is called “problematic.”

The hour for halflings is over. The hour for the harness is here.

Graham Platner won the nomination. He won it honestly. And every Senate Democrat who questions his character while Susan Collins remains in that chamber should be asked a single question:

Why are you attacking the man who refuses blood money while protecting the woman who helped destroy Roe v. Wade?

Let Cory Booker, Mark Kelly, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth, John Fetterman, and Peter Welch answer. Or let them be silent forever.

Lisa McCormick is a progressive Democrat who earned 38 percent of the vote in New Jersey’s 2018 primary election, when she challenged disgraced former US Senator Bob Menendez.